After shock-rock singer Alice Cooper was falsely reported to have torn apart a live chicken and drunk the blood during a 1969 concert, he got a call from his record producer, the late music legend Frank Zappa.

In the winter of 1992-93 I was living in Edmonton and teaching ESL. In my highest level class, a TOEFL prep course, was a young couple from Prague, as well as a young woman from Bratislava who happened